Archetype Prediction - Thief Priest

I predict that the Hearthstone Team will support Thief Priest as a new archetype in the next expansion. For one, they have already printed multiple Legendaries for this archetype, including Talanji and Madame Lazul. Plus, one of the Boomsday cards that they decided to buff was Cloning Device, which could only ever see play if Thief Priest got more synergy cards like Talanji. This next piece of evidence is a little shaky, but in the solo adventures one of the buckets is "What's Mind is Mine", which indicates that Blizzard already thinks of Thief priest as its own archetype. However, Thief priest cards have printed before (such as Archbishop Benedictus) without them following up with synergy cards, so this could just be empty speculation. What do y'all think? Will Thief Priest finally become a deck next expansion?

I think it's possible, but I don't think it very likely just based on this evidence. Stealing has always been part of the priest identity and it's been mostly left underexplored. Every other set they prient a thief rogue legendary (Lazul is just the new Chameleos). The more obvious reason for Talanji is Spirit of the Dead + Bwonsamdi, although the way she was worded does leave the room open for other kinds of shenanigans.

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing the archetype see a little bit of support. We've seen with rogue that even just one or two powerful synergy cards can be enough to warrant a "burgle package" without going all-in on the theme.  For example you could have a spell that said "5 mana : deal 3 damage to all minions. If you have a card from another class in your hand, deal 5 damage instead."

At the moment there just isn't enough of a consistent upside to taking cards from your opponent's deck to not just play that deck instead.

Thief Priest is definitely part of the Class identity.

But the same is true for Rogue. It's been for ages, yet the Thief trait has struggled to become actually defining of an archetype worthy of meta tiers, despite the continuous support.

Even in Wild, where Thief cards have been stacking up for a while now, a real Thief deck is yet to be seen in the meta radars (surely one could pilot one with decent results, but it's still off-meta).

I expect the same to be true for Priest, also in the future: Thief is a package you may include in a deck, an off-meta deck, but hardly an archetype in the meta.

On the other hand, you can already build a Thief-heavy Priest and play it. Just, without too many expectations.

I think the random nature of thief cards is where it has a hard time gaining traction. You just can't create a concrete game plan. Sometimes you get lucky but others you might just get a random card. If they made thief cards that were more deliberate and targeted this might change. 

Rogue has some much more solid synergy with cards like Spectral Cutlass that almost alone support the whole deck strategy. Priest actually doesn't have anything that can make it a competitive archetype (still a fun meme deck). Maybe if the print some interesting powercard in the next expansion set.

Priest can easily become stronger then rogue because thief rogue gets random cards, that can be very bad; mind thief priest steals card from your opponent deck, cards that your opponent choose to put inside his deck, so almost always good card.

However, in Hearthstone more then this class have some card generators as identity: rogue card from other classes, expecially your opponent's; priest from your opponent deck; mage random mage spells; hunter random beasts;

And we got random spell mage in quest mage; for thief rogue, we are really near having a strong thief deck with Tess and the 2 mana tempo drop; for priest, well, we'll see.

Quote From zoobernut

I think the random nature of thief cards is where it has a hard time gaining traction. You just can't create a concrete game plan. Sometimes you get lucky but others you might just get a random card. If they made thief cards that were more deliberate and targeted this might change. 

I think they've already started doing that by printing burgle effects that discover cards(Madame Lazul, Cloning Device, Hench Clan Burglar) rather than purely random ones. There's still a large random element of course, but at least you get some level of control over the outcome.

Thief Priest archetype is definitely nice to see. Throughout the past many expansions, there were similar cards like that, a bit of here and there. But not very consistent or strong to make it viable.

"Thief" is a terrible misnomer. They are copies; you are not actually stealing anything.

The original idea behind cards like these was that you were probing the opponent's mind to see what's in their hand or deck. Gaining a copy from it just happened to be the easiest way to express that mechanically.

In some cases, such as Mind Games, it's more about clouding minds to make their minions fight on your side.

Either way, the "lore" behind this part of the class identity is an aspect of shadow magic common to WoW Priests since the beginning of that game.

Oh dear God, Yes. I'm a big fan of the Steal archtype and I always hope to see more cards supporting this archtype. Regarding the question whether we will see this happening NEXT EXPANSION, well, I can't really predict based on the "evidence" we have right now. If I do, it would be me speculating as you said.

Quote From FortyDust

"Thief" is a terrible misnomer. They are copies; you are not actually stealing anything.

Well, plagiarism is also considered as a theft, because you are "stealing" someone else's ideas and representing them as your own. It's not important, if you physically take the original document and just replace the author's name with your own or you just write down whole paragraphs without making changes to the original work. Or the case with online piracy - downloading an illegal copy of someone's creation (video game, music video, movie....) and taking advantage of it without the author's permission, so I don't think thief is a misnormer.

In fact, I personally think this is a great way to express a certain in-game thematic. You have to admit, that if the rogue's and priest's thieving archtypes were called with their proper names, they wouldn't sound that exciting - Copy your opponent's cards Priest/Copy random cards from another class Rogue.

Plus, i would hope they dive more into the Oracle flavor, eg Mind Vision, Crystalline Oracle,  than some forceful psionic intrusion such as Thoughtsteal or Devour Mind, which sounds more pertaining to Shadow Priest.

Quote From zoobernut

I think the random nature of thief cards is where it has a hard time gaining traction. You just can't create a concrete game plan. Sometimes you get lucky but others you might just get a random card. If they made thief cards that were more deliberate and targeted this might change. 

I don't think this is the reason why the thief package can't take off atm. I don't want to brag, but back in RR I had a lot of success with two wild Thief Priest decks - one faster (that utilized a lot of cheap deathrattle minions) and one slower (that ran some meme cards like Chameleos). And the reason why I managed to win a lot of games and even reach Legend was due to the amazing control basis and the presence of Shadow Visions, which the class provides in that format. Priest's AoEs are massive, relatively cheap and can clear almost every board - Mass Hysteria, Lightbomb, Psychic Scream and Shadowreaper Anduin. As for healing I used Amara, Warden of Hope and some Greater Healing Potions. All of those things helped me survive the opponent's aggression.

Exactly this is missing in standard. Priests can't afford to run a defensive, value-oriented deck; otherwise they would easily die. The fact, that the cards, which could be generated from Thoughtsteal or Madame Lazul, are random and "can't create a concrete gameplan", isn't that big of an issue. I remember the time back in LoE, when Control priests used to prolong the whole game and win just by outvaluing the opponent.

Thief Priest is a very fun archetype, and it can go the distance against big or control decks.

The problem, as usual, is priest has very few viable early game options, and token aggro. Which the meta has a lot of. Shaman, druid, Zoolock and some hunters all can snowball faster than a 5-mana board clear in some cases.

Most importantly, synergy cards and little garbage minions like murlocs and treants don't make good random steals. Thief Priest archetype died in Un'Goro when shaman started evolving little garbage, and it got worse in following expansions as paladin joined in with the Silver Hand recruit spam and rogue went to weapons-based decks (or quest).

For Thief Priest to succeed, it would need multiple ways to STEAL MINIONS ON TABLE. Think Potion of Madness or a small taunt with a Sylvanas-like deathrattle. You have your opponents' minions killing themselves and leaving you deathrattle prizes, then there's a chance. The problem from this though, is you dilute the rez pool, if part of your strategy revolves around bringing minions back.